Curative petition filed in SC on Army recruitment policy

New Delhi: A curative petition has been filed in the Supreme Court against its verdict dismissing a PIL which challenged the recruitment policy in Army alleging that it was based on religion, region and caste distinctions and was discriminatory.

The curative petition is the last judicial resort available to a litigant to get grievances redressed by the court and it is normally decided by judges in chamber.

The petitioner, Haryana-based doctor Ishwar Yadav, filed the curative petition after the Apex Court rejected his review plea on April 16.

"The corrective power must be exercised so as to correct injustice in a case of unconstitutional method of recruitment of General Duty soldiers in Indian Army," Yadav said in his petition.

The Supreme Court had on April 16, declined to review its order of dismissing the PIL, which had questioned the recruitment policy in Army alleging that personnel were inducted on the basis of religion, region and caste, and had dismissed the review petition.

"We have examined the grounds urged in support of the prayer for review. We find no error apparent on the face of the record to warrant recall of our order dated 11th February,2014. The review petition is, accordingly, dismissed," the bench headed by justice T S Thakur had said while dismissing the review petition.

Yadav had alleged that grouping of people from a particular region in an Army regiment is unconstitutional and amounts to discrimination on caste, region and religion basis.

He questioned the practice in the Army for having regiments named as Sikh, Maratha, Jat, Rajputana and Gorkha to which only persons from the religion, region or caste concerned could be recruited.

The Army in its response to the earlier petition on the same issue had told the Supreme Court that it does not recruit on the basis of caste, region and religion but justified grouping of people from a region in a regiment for administrative convenience and operational requirements.

The Apex Court had dismissed Yadav's PIL saying, "We do not want to rock the Army's boat."